Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON)/Generalized Multi-protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) protocols are commonly used to set up point to point paths, or to dynamically adjust (increase/decrease) bandwidth of point to point paths in a Connection-Oriented Packet Service (COPS) environment. However, in a Connectionless Packet Service (CLPS) application, it is not required that a connection be established between a sender and receiver, and there is lack of mechanism in conventional systems that allows for dynamic bandwidth adjustment among client nodes.
In a conventional aggregation network (100) with a shared link, illustrated in FIG. 1, each client is connected to network (100) via an access port, such as port (131), (132), (133), (134), (135) and (136). All access port traffic is aggregated to a network node (104) via network nodes (112), (114), (116), (118) and (120), and then routed to core node/switch (102) via network node (104). In this topology, all access ports (131)-(136) share bandwidth on trunk (106) to core node/switch (102).
A conventional practice for network bandwidth control involves limiting ingress rate at each access port to be under certain Committed Information Rate (CIR), such as CIR1-CIR6 associated with each access port illustrated in FIG. 1. However, there are instances where some ports may need higher bandwidth only for some period of time. Under conventional practices, those ports may have to acquire the maximum bandwidth they may possibly utilize, even though they may actually only need high bandwidth within a small time window. In these instances, conventional practices lack flexibility and lower efficiency in bandwidth utilization.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a dynamic bandwidth sharing capability among clients that share network link resources, and to improve bandwidth sharing flexibility and efficiency.